He punched a handful of dimes out of the change dispenser hanging from his dashboard, took them to the booth and began hunting for Simpson, a heroin user who made a dangerous living fencing stolen goods and occasionally selling out one of his thieves to the police. Shayne located him at a bowling alley in southwest Miami.
“Mike Shayne? You’re hot, baby. You got your name on a bad list.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I hear they’re trying to sell another contract on you. But after last night it ain’t moving so fast.”
“Where’s the money coming from?”
“All I know, from out of town, but I’ll keep listening. Where can I reach you, and how much is it worth?”
“Don’t just listen,” Shayne said. “Ask. Say you’ve got a shooter you take a percentage on, and you don’t want to recommend it to him unless you know what you’re getting him into.”
There was a moment’s silence. “Man, if it was anybody else I’d laugh, but I think I like it from you. I do know a guy. He’s so stupid he never heard of Mike Shayne. But it’s kind of risky to me personally, you know? You’ll have to come up with a good number.”
“One thousand.”
“Mike, I think,” Simpson said hesitantly, “I think we’re in business. You pay me, and the guy pays me. It could make a very nice middle. How much do I get up front?”
“Nothing. It’s an automatic fee if I live five days.”
Startled, Simpson laughed. “Nice. That way I won’t feel tempted. But I’ve got to live through those five days myself, so put a hundred in the mail? Then I’ll have something to fall back on.”
Shayne heard his car phone. He agreed to Simpson’s suggestion, and got back in time to catch the call. “Mike?” Rourke said. “Did Frieda get you?”
“I’ve been tied up with Painter. What happened?”
“Castle pulled out at about four o’clock. She got to the airport in time, but he went in a private plane. Lear jet, two-engine. Naturally he wouldn’t want to travel with ordinary tourists. I’m at International, but no private Lear has shown up here yet. There are too many possible airports.”
“I’m not ready for him, anyway. Is she coming back tonight?”
“Maybe. She’ll call again. She found out where Geary stayed when he was in Nassau. There was a girlfriend, apparently, which may be where the money went. Frieda’s going out to talk to her.”
“Do you have a phone number?” Shayne said quickly.
“No, she’ll call me. She said she knows she’s in enemy country. She’ll watch the rearview mirror. She wanted to know how things are going here, and I told her fine. Was that the right answer?”
Shayne was kneading the bridge of his nose. “People keep telling me things. Forget about Castle for now. He has to come to us.”
“I wish he’d come over in a smaller plane. Those Lears can carry a dozen people. All right, I’ll go back to the office and start calling airports.”
The Nash dog track was only a few blocks away. Bobby Nash was waiting in his office, and as soon as Shayne arrived he called in a burly, bearded young man named Dave.
“Dave’s our resident brain,” Nash said. “But I’m beginning to think I was too fast about saying yes, Mike. This could backfire, and damage the whole industry.”
“There’s a chance of that,” Shayne said. “Geary was crooked, Surfside was crooked, therefore it follows that all the other owners and all the other tracks are crooked. But too many people have money tied up in the business. You’re part of the tourist draw, and the tax take is enormous. We’re dealing with large matters here-murder, conspiracy, large-scale corruption. If we put on a good enough show, maybe including one or two deaths, I think we’ll see a big rush to put the lid back on and get back to normal.”
“Deaths,” Nash said thoughtfully.
“All you can do is hope.”
“Dave and I have been talking, and there are going to be problems. I mean from the technical end.”
Given his general hairiness and a pair of big-lensed glasses, not much of Dave’s face was showing, but as much as Shayne could see seemed friendly. His belly was held in by a wide belt with holsters for various tools.
“The closed-circuit cables are in channels in the walls,” he explained. “You can’t run a duplicate system without tearing everything out.”
“I’m thinking in terms of substitutions,” Shayne said. “Take the lockup kennel. There’s one camera there now. Leave it where it is, but cut it off. Hide another somewhere else in the kennel, and tie it into the regular circuit.”
“Why not?” Dave said. “In a duct, a light fixture. I know where we can get some two-way mirrors. Then the picture coming into the monitors is taken from a completely new angle. But the kennel guys don’t know that. Yeah. It would help if we had a wiring diagram. Then we could cut directly into one of the main feeds.”
“I think I can get you that. Can you tape the closed-circuit picture and play it back later?”
“No problem, depending on the size of their video machine. With ours, we can store twelve hours of action without changing tapes. You mean replay over the regular outlets?”
“The same way they replay a race after it’s over.”
“Simple as throwing a switch. Everything goes into the mixing console. Of course closed circuit is black-and-white, and the track cameras are color. You’ve got four of those working. They’re usually fixed, on an automatic swivel, but turn them loose, and you can film anything. Store it, edit it, mix it up, play it backwards. Hey, this is going to be great.”
“Let’s think in terms of ten cameras. How much time will you need?”
“To hide everything? Days. How much time do we have?”
“Between two A.M. and seven tomorrow morning.”
“Then it won’t be perfect. You’ll just have to arrange enough excitement so nobody looks real close.”
At Surfside, across the bay in Miami Beach, racing was well underway by the time Shayne and Dave had talked through the problem. Shayne would be shaping events, but he knew he couldn’t control them. He had to be ready to move in unexpected directions. He kept throwing out ideas. Dave, sometimes using diagrams or referring to the actual equipment, told him whether or not he thought they would work. If the answer was no, he explained why, and Shayne was sometimes able to come up with a modification. Dave had a rough working knowledge of the Surfside system, but in some cases he would have to wait till he saw the physical layout.
Nash arranged a forty-eight-hour floater policy with his insurance agent, to cover the borrowed equipment. Shayne left them dismantling cameras and preparing an inventory. Nash was still wavering between awe at the scope of Shayne’s proposals, and worry about all the possible things that could go wrong.
Shayne had fallen behind on his phone calls. Surprisingly, it was the sports editor, Wanamaker, who had turned up a link between Tony Castle and C. and W. Factors, which had loaned several bushels of money to Harry Zell. The Cuban detective who had been following Ricardo Sanchez reported that Sanchez had arrived early at the kennel, where without Dee Wynn he would be fully occupied for the next couple of hours, and the detective was about to have a drink with a cousin, who worked at the Pompano Beach harness track. Rourke had had no further word from Frieda.
Surfside’s phones had been put on the Centrex system, with automatic switching and a different number for each extension. Shayne dialed the number given for Public Relations. Linda Geary answered.
“You big ugly redhead,” she said hoarsely. “Where have you been all day? Why didn’t you call me? What are you up to, damn it?”
“Working on Sanchez. One or two other things. I’m going to need a little sponsorship. Can you arrange for me to have the run of the track tonight after everything closes?”